Kindness Classes: The Dos & Duhs of Dating App Etiquette

August 29, 2017

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Art by Regina Badiee

There are some things a lot of us should have learned in school—you know, that place where we first discovered how different we are. You remember that moment: in P.E. when your baby fat got you picked last for a team; or on the playground, when you were excluded from games for being too girly.

Things haven’t changed much. Gays today are on another playground: the dating or hookup app. Over here, swings are swipes of a screen and potential playmates are the guys we meet for a quick romp or the possibility of romance. The tragedy is that now a lot of us have become the bullies.

If you haven’t already been the victim or even perpetrator of such behavior, you’ve heard how homos can be horrendous on these apps. The quickness and convenience of making connections plus the option of anonymity has created many a digital douchefag. As “No femmes, No Fats,” and in foreign countries, “No Blacks, No Asians,” have become sightings as frequent as unsolicited dick pics, it’s as if the evolved creatures that we know gays to be just wind up either Neanderthals or Nazis online.

We were rooting for you, you gays!

Still, we believe good gaykind can prevail over nasty queendom. So here’s a reminder for those aiming to be kweens: you’d best remember how regal a little respect to your fellow homos could be. With gay social apps like BLUED replacing the real-life barroom, we could try staying true to how we’d usually act IRL. So in an effort to keep it classy online, this class is now in session.

BIO CLASS

There was a time when dating bios were used for putting our best foot forward, a few winning qualities included in the text. These days, it seems many gays think that a bad, discriminatory attitude is attractive. Look bitch, who you prefer to have sex with is your business, but a publicly declared desire not to associate oneself with people of a certain race, age, or body type is hurtful and unnecessary. Simply put: go ahead and post about the kind of guy you’re looking for, but spare us from the hate speech.

RESTRAINT & RELAXATION

Think about it: when you’re at a bar and someone flashes you a look of interest, you respond either with a similar gaze or by averting your eyes from them. Even when that Romeo proves relentless and comes up to you, a lack of attraction on your part doesn’t warrant calling the person out for not getting the memo on your standards of fuckability. So don’t be rude, kweens. The fact you’ve been approached means you’re already at an advantage—no need to look down on someone for their skin color, their body weight, or their bad grammar. Digital eye aversion would be not to respond, to block if necessary. If someone wants to get in your pants, a below-the-belt response is absolutely uncalled for.

Avoid an approach you wouldn’t try in the real world. So we’re guessing you shouldn’t expect a response when you’ve sent a snap of your ungroomed testicles and a conversation starter like “fuck you so deep so your boy hole can juggle these balls.”

This goes both ways, of course. Avoid an approach you wouldn’t try in the real world. So we’re guessing you shouldn’t expect a response when you’ve sent a snap of your ungroomed testicles and a conversation starter like “fuck you so deep so your boy hole can juggle these balls.” If you do wanna juggle those balls, there’s nothing wrong with that, but sometimes being too extra when it comes to persistence can backfire. Now if a hello and a casual show of interest doesn’t get you a reply, just move on—calling someone out for not showing the same enthusiasm won’t get you any more laid, hunty.

GHOST BUSTERS

Connections carry a level of commitment in a platform as fleeting as the dating app. You exchange some witty banter with someone, maybe some cute emojis and a possible meet-up date, and you can’t just go cold on them. That was time invested on someone’s part—time that could have been invested in the many social (media) obligations one has, or on some other guy ignored for your attention. The people you decide to engage on a dating app aren’t just there for the repossessing after you disappeared on them—they’ve got lives too! So let them move on by being upfront with them, telling them whether you’ve decided to see things through with another guy or whether they said something that turned you off. So don’t ghost—because you don’t want to be haunted by a connection you’ve let go to shit.

SHOP

About Team

TEAM tackles how gay Filipino men relate their identity, from fuckups to fantasies, to where to go for music you can actually dance to. We may not have proper rights in our country but we’re claiming some authority by getting our words and ideas on page. And though we lack public places to convene, an open publication (and wide-open digital space) is a good place to start.